fucú
foo-KOOnoun, interjectionColloquial
A Dominican Spanish slang term. Browse all Dominican slang.
What it means
Bad luck attached to a thing, a person or a name — a jinx. Not a metaphor for most speakers: saying certain words aloud is held to bring the fucú with them.
Said alone as a warning that someone has just invited misfortune. The countermeasure is to answer '¡zafa!', which cancels it, sometimes with a hand gesture.
Examples with translations
No diga' eso, que eso e' fucú.
Don't say that, it's bad luck.
¡Fucú! ¡Zafa, zafa!
Jinx! Off with it, off with it!
Note: Zafa is the fixed reply. Saying fucú without someone offering zafa leaves the thing hanging, which is the point of the exchange.
Where it comes from
From a Kikongo or related Bantu word for a malevolent spirit, carried to the island through the slave trade; Haitian Creole has cognate forms. It is one of the clearest African survivals in Dominican Spanish and belongs to a wider belief system rather than to slang proper.
Other forms
- Similar terms:
- zafa